This was my first abortive journey into the land of speculative punditry in 2016. Goes to show you that even this kid is guilty of the sin of underestimating Donald Trump. As I watched him accepting his second nomination tonight, I thought it would be fun to look back at my errors back then. I was sure wrong. As was everybody else.
For the first time in weeks, a shaft of light has cut through the darkness of a prospective Donald Trump Presidency. If you had asked a boatload of talking heads a week ago, if there was any chance to stop the carrot-topped, malignant narcissist, from hijacking the Republican nomination...the answer would have been a huge "probably not." Despite the odds, Mitt Romney has tried to stop the manure truck before it crashed. To no avail. This is one great ad though.
For the first time in weeks, a shaft of light has cut through the darkness of a prospective Donald Trump Presidency. If you had asked a boatload of talking heads a week ago, if there was any chance to stop the carrot-topped, malignant narcissist, from hijacking the Republican nomination...the answer would have been a huge "probably not." Despite the odds, Mitt Romney has tried to stop the manure truck before it crashed. To no avail. This is one great ad though.
Who would have guessed this video of Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski was going to surface, showing just how "great for women" a Trump Presidency just might be?
Compounding things, there was this first event (EVER) that has brought the opposing sides of the abortion battle together (in universal condemnation) was this now-famous Town Hall moment with Chris Mathews.
Lest we forget, the prospect of Donald's itchy finger on the button has become an area of serious concern amongst anyone who remembers "duck and cover drills" in the days when we really could have been nuked. Today's Politico article captures my thoughts perfectly, " One biographer, familiar with Trump’s primal response to any perceived insult, drew a frightening picture of a quickly escalating set of attacks and responses, with major cities caught in the crossfire."
Before we breathe a sigh of relief that Lying Ted Cruz might head off Donald at the pass by winning the Wisconsin primary, there is that disturbing rumor the #never trump forces must contend with. Not this one in the Enquirer, but the ongoing rumor that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. Seriously.
For those thinking there may be yet a Trump-Cruz deal in the works before July's RNC, Ted's appearance on Kimmel probably precluded that as an option.
I do feel sorry for Heidi.
With all the dysfunction in the Republican Party, we may be looking at the first truly contested convention since 1976. Like Nixon in 1968, if Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot, he’s not going to make it. Though the delegates to the Convention are bound on the first ballot to vote for the primary or caucus winners, as each ballot ensures more and more delegates are released to vote for whoever they want. and the majority of the 2,472 delegates are going to be selected by their state party. With most party organizations being the last bastion of the same party regulars, the same party establishment, that Trump and Cruz have depleted oxygen running against, there is a YUGE chance both will leave LeBron's arena, without their ring.
Since the early 1970s, the title of delegate has been largely an honorific. With a contested convention we will find that once the first ballot passes, the nomination will devolve on a group of people that are selected separately from the Presidential primaries and caucuses. Even in the days running up to the convention, there are going to be a few uncommitted delegates roaming around, that are released to vote by the other candidates, though Marco Rubio has said he is going to keep the nearly 200 delegates he won through an initial ballot. In most states, the potential delegates have not been seated, and will not do so until the cycle of district conventions and state Republican conventions occurs in late spring. (The New York Times has done a great job of explaining those procedures in this article.)
As the Times details in this chart, the campaigns are going to try very hard to elect their loyalists to each delegate chair, even if Trump has won the first ballot commitment at the polls. So if the first ballot proves inconclusive, there may be a reprise of the "smoke-filled room" of political lore. And if the game turns to the retail wooing of delegates, Trump’s lack of organization might just end his campaign.
In a dynamic where expertise in the arcane world of party by-laws will greatly matter, it will be: Trump just recently hired a strategist to oversee his delegate-selection efforts; Cruz has been working on the process for months. The other is his lack of support from “party elites.” The people who attend state caucuses and conventions are mostly dyed-in-the-wool Republican regulars and insiders, a group that is vigorously opposed to Trump. Furthermore, some delegate slots are automatically given to party leaders and elected officials, another group that strongly opposes Trump, as evident in his lack of endorsements among them.
There are various ways these delegates could cause problems for Trump. The most obvious, as I mentioned, is if the convention goes to a second ballot because no candidate wins a majority on the first. Not all delegates become free instantaneously but most do and left to vote their personal preference, most of them will probably oppose Trump.
Conversely, Trump isn’t totally safe even if he locks up 1,237 delegates by the time the final Republicans vote. The delegates have a lot of power, both on the convention floor and in the various rules and credentials, committees that will begin meeting before the convention officially begins. If they wanted to, the delegates could deploy a “nuclear option” on Trump and vote to unbind themselves on the first ballot, a strategy Ted Kennedy unsuccessfully pursued against Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Although I’d place fairly long odds against this thermonuclear tactic, there’s also the possibility of piecemeal skirmishes for delegates. In South Carolina, for instance, delegates might unbind themselves on the pretext that Trump withdrew his pledge to support the Republican nominee. Remember those chaotic Nevada caucuses that Trump won? They could be the subject of a credentials challenge.
There could also be disputes over the disposition of delegates from Marco Rubio and other candidates who have dropped out of the race. A final possibility is “faithless delegates,” where individual delegates simply decline to vote for Trump despite being bound to do so by party rules. It’s not clear whether this is allowed under Republican rules, but and also unclear what enforcement would look like.
I don’t want to make too much of these “nuclear” possibilities, given that such efforts would be blatantly undemocratic and would risk a huge backlash from Republican voters. Still, even 1,237 delegates aren’t quite a safe number for Trump, especially if he’s just barely above that threshold
Another possibility is Trump coming up somewhat short of 1,237 delegates, but close enough that he could win on the basis of uncommitted delegates who vote for him on the first ballot. In fact, Trump finishing with something like 1,200 delegates is a strong possibility. The expert panel we convened two weeks ago had Trump finishing at 1,208 delegates, with a lot of uncertainty on either side of that estimate, and he’s run just slightly behind our projected pace since then by getting shut out of delegates in Utah.
Let’s assume that Trump ends with exactly 1,200 delegates after California. He’d then need 37 uncommitted delegates to win on the first ballot. That might not seem like such a tall order — there will be at least 138 uncommitted delegates, according to Daniel Nichanian’s tracking, and Trump would need only 27 percent of those. But most of those delegates4 are chosen at state meetings and conventions, the same events producing unfavorable delegate slates for Trump in Massachusetts and other states.
Alternatively, Trump could try to broker a deal with another candidate — Kasich, for example — to get to 1,237. But that isn’t so easy either; whether Kasich could instruct his delegates to vote for Trump on the first ballot would vary depending on the rules in each state, and some delegates could become unbound instead of having to vote Trump. Trump and Kasich could also try to strike a deal on the second ballot — but by that point, most of their delegates would have become free to vote as they please.
This is not an exhaustive list of complications. We’ll save the discussion about Rule 40 — and why it’s largely toothless — for another time. The basic problem for Trump is that all the rules will be written and interpreted by the delegates, delegates who mostly don’t like Trump. They have a lot of power to wield at their discretion.
